1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of collaborative computing and more particularly to instant messaging.
2. Description of the Related Art
Instant messaging as a technology provides the backbone of real time communications amongst collaborators. Though the notion of real time communications harkens back before the days of the World Wide Web to a citizens band radio analog for computer communications, instant messaging as a technology only has begun to come into its own in the past several years. Originally, instant messaging was limited only to the basic exchange of text messages within a dashboard display of messages. As the technology has matured, though, additional functionality has been added including the integration of voice and video into chat sessions.
Instant messaging has proven to be an invaluable tool in the corporate environment linking remote workers engaging in collaborative work without requiring those remote workers to engage in wasteful telephonic conversation or to wait out e-mail responses from others who may or may not actively scan respective e-mail inboxes. Instant messaging provides the added benefit of optimally accommodating very short messages such that an exchange of instant messages, often referred to as a chat, can be direct and to the point. As such, instant messaging has proven to be helpful in the exchange of important information in a timely manner.
The nature of instant messaging, however, is not without fault. In this regard, instant messaging provides such easy instant communications amongst different collaborators, oftentimes, too many instant messaging sessions can arise at once. When too many instant messaging sessions open in a short period of time, managing responses to the sessions can be overwhelming. Consequently, the efficiencies gained by instant messaging in ordinary circumstances can be defeated from time to time by an overflow of open instant messaging sessions and the responsibility to manage each open instant messaging session.
In presently co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/780,753, multiple different open instant messaging sessions can be handled in group in a response. Specifically, different open instant messaging sessions can be selected for group processing and a single responsive posting can be applied to each individual one of the open instant messaging sessions. In consequence, greater efficiencies can be attained by treating the open instant messaging sessions unitarily.